Tony Bennett has built the Virginia men’s basketball program on the foundation of defense. That’s how his team can shoot 32.7% from the floor and score just 45 points but still win by 19. The Hoos did exactly that on Saturday night in Brooklyn as they downed Rutgers 45-26 in the Barclays Center Classic Championship.
It’s the second straight season with an early season tournament title for the Wahoos. They captured the Corpus Christi Challenge last November.
“Any win is a Virginia kind of win. You’ve got to win in different ways. We didn’t shoot it well, we’ve got to keep working on that, but you just find ways,” UVa coach Tony Bennett said on the NBC Sports broadcast. “I’ve been in a lot of different programs and I know it’s about the intangibles in games like that and our guys didn’t back down even though we were a little shook at halftime.”
Low-scoring nights are a regular occurrence for opponents in the Bennett era as the Hoos have held teams to less than 50 points 42 times in his tenure. Saturday’s victory marked the 11th time, and third time this season, that UVa held an opponent to less than 40 points.
The game against Rutgers, however, set a new benchmark for the Pack-Line defense. In fact, the 26 total points are the fewest allowed by Virginia in the shot clock era (1986). RU had just four assists and 12 turnovers as it struggled to manufacture any offense or any easy buckets. The Scarlet Knights had only four points off of turnovers and two second-chance points; they didn’t score any fastbreak points and only earned three free throw attempts.
Rutgers shot 25% from the field and 0% from three-point range. The second-half numbers were even lower when the Scarlet Knights made just four of 26 shots (15.4%), including misses on all 10 attempts beyond the arc. They went scoreless for nearly 10 minutes (9:24) and managed just eight points after intermission as the Hoos took the half by 20 points.
“They have good players who are willing and determined to be as good as a team,” Rutgers coach Eddie Jordan told The Associated Press. “They’ll defend. I had experience with the New Jersey Nets, not in this building, but we had Kenyon Martin, Jason Kidd, Kerry Kittles, and Dikembe [Mutombo], those guys you don’t have a whole lot to say to them. They want to defend. It seems like that’s what they do. They want to defend and they got good size at every position. Good athletes at every position. They got good players and that makes up a good team.”
Virginia needed the strong defensive effort thanks to its own offensive struggles. The Wahoos trailed 18-17 at halftime despite opening the game with an 11-3 run. That early lead withered away when UVa missed 13 of its final 16 shots of the half. The Hoos shot 28.6% (eight of 28) in the first half and 32.7% (18 of 55) for the game, including an ugly two for 16 (12.5%) on three-pointers. Bennett joked the poor shooting chipped the paint off the rims at the Barclays Center.
The percentages only increased slightly in the second half, but the Cavaliers made a more concerted effort to get better shots near the rim. They came out of the locker room feeding Anthony Gill and he delivered with buckets or trips to the free throw line. He made four of five shots from the floor and five of six free throws in the game. The forward finished with 13 points, five rebounds, two assists, and one steal. Gill earned MVP honors for the tournament.
Fellow junior Justin Anderson matched Gill’s scoring output with 13 points of his own to go with four rebounds and one assist. Anderson did most of his damage on dunks off of drives in both the halfcourt offense and in transition. He scored early on a drive down the middle for a two-handed jam and late on a baseline dunk for example. He made six of 12 shots in the game. Anderson made the all-tournament team.
Outside of that duo, the rest of the line-up struggled to make shots. The starting backcourt combined to go three of 17 from the floor with Malcolm Brogdon making three of 12 shots and London Perrantes missing on all five of his attempts. Brogdon had six points, five turnovers, and only two assists, while Perrantes tallied four assists and three rebounds with zero points and zero turnovers.
Besides Gill, Anderson, and Brogdon, only one other Cavalier made more than one shot. That was freshman Marial Shayok, who finished two of eight with five points.
“It’s sometimes good to see your team struggle and how they respond,” Bennett said on the NBC Sports broadcast. “We struggled [Friday] and lost a lead when they cut it to three or four. … I wanted to see how we were [Saturday]. We were almost too patient to start the game. You learn so much about yourself either in struggle or adversity and I thought our guys kind of became tougher in this.”
The Cavaliers will try to remedy their offensive struggles this week as a tough stretch arrives on the schedule. They are at Maryland on Wednesday and at VCU on Saturday before taking a 12-day hiatus for exams. Virginia takes a 7-0 record, its best start since 2003-04, into the two road tests.
